


Purified

by alizarin_nyc



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-01
Updated: 2008-09-01
Packaged: 2017-12-07 01:00:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/742263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alizarin_nyc/pseuds/alizarin_nyc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The demons have won. Sam isn’t going to be able to save the rest of world, not unless someone helps him do it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Purified

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the apocalyptothon 2008 for marishna.

Maybe Sam thought that by fucking a demon, he’d be closer to Dean. Man, he really wanted to think that, he really did. It never failed to cross his mind as he was nailing Ruby to the creaky motel bed.

_DeanDeanDean._

And if he shouted his brother’s name as he climaxed, Ruby didn’t mention it afterward. She was good that way, Ruby. She wasn’t like other girls.

The first thing they did when the world ended was to get fucked up. Dead bodies didn’t smell half so bad if you were high. Ruby seemed to be taking it hard, too. She was a good kid, that Ruby, for all she was a demon.

For all anyone was a demon.

There was hardly anything but demons, now. They were having quite a party. They’d taken the bodies they wanted and were having a ball. When they kill everyone, then what will they do? Sam asked Ruby. She shook her head and laughed. If she knew the answer, she wasn’t saying. What else did demons do with their spare time?

Hell on earth. It was just as advertised.

For a very long time, Sam and Ruby traversed the same old ground that he and Dean had done before it all went to shit. Small town America. It was all he knew now, anyway. But now, every single town was twisted and ugly, the worst of human nature brought to the fore. Demons spread like a plague through the country, taking families hostage, playing their little evil-dead games and leaving a trail of bloodied and burnt corpses in their wake. Sam’s throat was raw from constantly puking. Every time he thought he’d never lose his breakfast again, that he’d seen the most gruesome horror-movie cliché he could possibly imagine, he’d turn around and the it would hit him full in the face. Combined with his grief, his fear, his despair. The mix turned his stomach. Churned his guts. He’d be on his knees, losing his friggin’ cookies.

Your humanity is the only thing that is giving me hope, Ruby said. But you still disgust me.

Thanks. Thanks a lot. Sam turned to look at her from his crouched position on the asphalt. Thought you’d hold my hair back for me at least.

Ruby wasn’t sentimental. Her secrets went as deep as tree roots. Sam couldn’t figure out why she still believed, why she stayed with him. The demons didn’t bother coming after him, not now. They had what they needed. They didn’t need their demon king after all. Sam was an afterthought. Demonkind would have them for dessert, right after they finished their grand buffet. They’d pick their teeth with Sam’s bones.

I don’t like the way they look at me, Sam said. They’re so fucking smug.

Wouldn’t you be, if you’d won?

He smiled. Dean would be, yeah. He’d feel pretty damn pleased with himself.

You two would celebrate.

Hell yeah, we would.

You call out his name when we’re having sex.

Thought we didn’t have to talk about that.

You thought. We don’t.

We’d celebrate. Sam kept on talking because it made him feel better. Ruby didn’t need talk. She was sitting at the window of the second-story motel room. She was brushing her hair. Sam thought the sound was soothing. _Brush, brush._ It was one of those words where the word sounded like what it was. What was that called? It seemed that his ability to remember things – so valuable when he thought he’d become a lawyer – was diminishing.

Onomatopoeia. That’s it. Sam snapped his fingers.

Ruby didn’t turn around. She kept brushing. None of it was any good anymore. What good were words when the world had ended?

Sam closed his eyes. He slept a lot now. He dreamed a lot. Sometimes the dreams actually had happy endings. When that happened he’d stay in them for as long as possible. He fought waking up and pushed Ruby away when she pressed up against his back with her bare breasts.

When he woke up one day, Ruby was gone, a message scrawled in lipstick on the mirror.

South, it said.

+++

Sam scavenged at the nearest grocery store. Another can of beans, a can of sliced bamboo shoots and stale granola in a battered box. As good as it tasted, he would have given anything to have fresh cheese, a bell pepper, a baked potato with sour cream and chives. A post-apocalyptic existence was all about want. And memory.

He filled his bags with cigarettes and warm beer, canned stuff and bottles. Screw it, he took a grocery cart and put the bags in it and started driving the cart down the highway. He was like a homeless person. Not like, he _was_ a homeless person. His hair was longer than Jesus' in all the Catholic pictures and was slowly working its way into dreadlocks.

He went south because it seemed like the thing to do.

+++

The weather was changing. Slowly, at first, then more noticeable. It was hot. It was hot even for what was probably Texas, maybe New Mexico. Sam knew he hadn’t crossed the border yet, but might be getting close. There weren’t any clouds in the sky and the thermometers read 125 degrees in the shade. Global warming, demon-style.

When he finally collapsed in a broiled heap of sunburnt skin and bones, his cart had three wheels and he was down to his last can of beans, his last bottle of water the temperature of hot tea. The bodies along the way were mere bones and he hadn’t seen a demon in days. The asphalt baked and shimmered and all the brush was slowly tumbleweeding away, south, south, south.

The last of his saliva evaporated on the ground.

It would be a relief to finally die.

+++

“Sammy! Get up!”

The roar of Dean’s voice shattered the silence. Even though it was in his head.

“I’m not kidding, man. Get your lazy ass up.” Dean. He was always calling Sam lazy. He was always up way too early for someone who went to bed as late as he did and usually accompanied his evenings with several beers and more than his share of whiskey.

Typical that Sam would hallucinate Dean’s more annoying characteristics just as he was about to die.

But the hand on his shoulder felt real. It was a hell of a hallucination.

“Hey man, you in there? So much dirt you almost blend in. Sammy!”

Sam cracked open an eye. Dean looked pretty good for a ghost. He was wearing exactly what he’d been wearing on the day he went to Hell, but otherwise he was none the worse for wear. Sam closed his eye again.

“No, no, hey Sammy, no sleeping. I am not carrying you to the car.”

Car?

+++

Dean did carry him to the car eventually. Or at least he must have, because the next thing Sam knew, he was moving. He was in the passenger seat. Johnny Cash was blaring from the stereo. Sam hadn’t heard music in six months.

Music, he said. The first word.

“Yeah, nothing like a tour of Hell to make one really appreciate J.C.,” Dean said.

“Dean.” Sam found his voice. Sam opened his eyes, took in the dashboard of the Impala, the profile of his brother -- _Dean_ \-- the rain pelting the windshield, wipers slicking off and off and off the most beautiful rain in the world, the smell of the Impala’s leather, and Sam just breathed it in and felt dizzy. He let his head drop back.

“Easy little brother.” Dean was pulling over to the side of the road.

“Where are we?”

“Mexico. Nearing Mexico City. But skirting it – no need to get caught up in that kind of traffic.” Dean chuckled as if they were on some kind of wild Jack Kerouac road trip.

“Dean. How did you get out?”

“Long story. But I can sum it up for you: Ruby. She figured that you were a complete waste of space without me. And let me tell you, Sam, I got real choked up when she said that. There were almost tears.”

“Still a smartass. Hell couldn’t burn that out of you, huh?”

“Nah. Luckily I only remember screaming in pain and lots of darkness. Not so much brimstone, which I really feel took away from the overall atmosphere. My blog is going to reflect that, let me tell you.”

“Where we going, Dean?”

“Somewhere you can take a shower. Do you know how long you’ve been sleeping? I had to hook up an I.V. in you to get you hydrated. Used up all my towels and you still reek. Then we are going to forage for some serious tequila.”

Sam almost gagged at the thought. “I think I may need a few more days before we really start to take Mexico by storm. So how did Ruby manage this? How did you find me? Shit, Dean, I really need some answers.”

“All in good time, bro.” And he stepped on the accelerator and they peeled out, water everywhere, Dean’s shit-eating grin nearly contagious enough to infect Sam.

+++

Mexico was freedom. Sam felt better with every mile they drove. He had some amazing tacos at a farmer’s collective that had survived the demon droves and happily fed them and gave them some gas. They called him by name, and told him they'd see him soon.

Dean said he’d been sprung from Hell, courtesy of their pal Ruby, who’d pulled some important strings. Slept with Lucifer himself, probably, Dean said, and Sam defended her honor, earning him a cheeky glance from Dean.

Dean said he’d opened his eyes and instead of having them gouged out, he was staring at the steering wheel of the Impala, the word “south” written in the dust on the windshield. It hadn’t been a mile before he saw the overturned shopping cart, a can of beans, and Sam’s corpse.

“A sight for sore eyes, if not a smell for the nose,” Dean said. He was never going to let _that_ particular joke go.

+++

They met up with Ruby in Costa Rica. She strolled out of a beach bar, dressed in a translucent sarong and a red bikini. Sam felt a familiar rush of lust and heat at the sight of her. She was tan and the surf pounded behind her, washing up corpses, but still somehow beautiful.

“Renegades inside. All humans,” Ruby said by way of greeting. “They have demon friends, too. They’re all willing to follow our Sammy here. Come on in and meet them, have a beer.”

“Good to see you too, Ruby,” Sam joked. She was never one for small talk. Did he love that about her? He wasn’t sure.

“Hi Sam.” Dimples. She had them, he noticed.

“Missed you too, sweetheart.” Dean’s two cents. “Lead us to the holy beer.”

Once inside, Sam met another group of so-called renegades; survivors of the apocalypse who had been too poor, too unattractive, too whatever to have been chosen by demons for possession. They were getting organized, just like the farmer’s collective, courtesy of Ruby and her leadership qualities. But they wanted _Sam_ to lead them.

It was the same old story, according to Dean. Sam was special, Sam was chosen, Sam could still strike fear in the hearts of evil demons everywhere. And good demons – relative as that term was – wanted to follow Sam too.

“You’re different,” Sam told Ruby later at the bar, sipping Imperial beer and watching the rain roll in over a sullen sea.

“I don’t know what Dean told you, but I’m a little more human now. It’s a reward, in a way.”

“He didn’t tell me that. He says he doesn’t remember much of Hell. _But._ ”

“He’s different too.”

“Just enough of the same to make me feel okay about it, though.”

“The fires of hell can never burn all of Dean Winchester out of the man.” Ruby shivered and pulled on a long knit dress over her bikini. The dress had a hood and her face was cradled inside. It was a suddenly sweet face.

“So what,” Sam said, “You’re 30 per cent more human now, or something?”

“Or something.”

“And you convinced the demons in power to let Dean go. I have to thank you for that…”

“No.” Ruby interrupted him, held out her hand. “This is different, Sam. Dean is working on accepting this. But I didn’t work with the demons in power. I worked with a higher power. It’s time to tip the scales. Do you know the story of Noah’s Ark?”

“Yeah,” Sam laughed. “Two by two, lots of rain, a flood… wait. What are you saying?”

“It’s true the demons hastened global warming with their random acts of evil – burning down forests among the least of them – but let’s say they now have help from above.” Ruby waggled her fingers toward the ceiling. “He’s flooding them out.”

“So it’s a brave new world of water. Just what I’d hoped for.”

“That’s why we’re heading south, as far as we can. Warm rains, we won’t get snowed in. Demons hate the cold. All we have to do is survive. In a few years it will be a brand new world. Today might have been my last chance to wear a bikini, 'cause it’s all rain slickers and rowboats from here on out.”

“Would you like to go upstairs?” Sam asked suddenly.

“I brought you your beloved brother back, and you still want to bunk with me?”

Sam found that he did. He held her hand as they ascended the stairs to her room – the bar was in a former surfer’s hotel. Ocean views. Ratty bedspreads. Cold showers.

He cried out Ruby’s name this time.

+++

“Wakey wakey!” Dean shouted in the morning. “Mosquitoes kept me up all night and if I don’t get some coffee and eggs right now, there’s going to be hell to pay.”

Sam opened the door in his boxers and tugged Dean inside their tiny room. He had slept fine, thank you, and was feeling pretty happy considering there was a flood to escape and plenty of miles until they reached the Atacama desert, an arid dry place in Chile, (Ruby's idea, of course). Not to mention a continent’s-worth of people and not-people who wanted him to be their leader as they rid the world of the baddies and survived a few hurricanes. Tip the scales.

He grabbed Dean in a bear hug and nearly broke his brother’s ribs.

“Jesus, Sam, get a grip. Not in front of the new girlfriend, she’ll get jealous.”

Sam tipped Dean over onto the bed, where Ruby was sitting demurely covered with a sheet.

“The three of us are going to have a damn good time,” Sam said. “We’re going to be okay. I’m ready. I’m going to lead the people.”

“You’ve lost your damn mind,” Dean muttered. Ruby leaned over and kissed Dean, right on the lips. Sam didn’t even mind. He kissed Ruby after that, then he kissed Dean. Dean repeated the bit about losing his damn mind, but Sam still didn’t care. He’d always been open to the idea of a higher power. One that was finally on their side was pretty awesome. God is love, he thought briefly, squeezing Ruby's hand and looking at Dean.

“Let’s go build an ark, man,” he said.


End file.
